How A Speck of Dust Helped Sarah Silverman Deal With Personal Loss

“An amazing amount” has changed for Sarah Silverman since her last standup special in 2013, from a hospital stay with epiglottitis (which she details in her new special), to the loss of loved ones.

“This special has been so many starts and stops and weird changes. Not to get sad, but I lost three huge people in my life in less than two years, so that was just something I had never experienced in such a short amount of time,” Silverman told E! News while promoting her new

Silverman said she wasn’t taking a sabbatical from standup because she was shooting a movie, it was “‘I can’t imagine going on stage and telling jokes,'” she said. “It was those kind of stops. But then I’d start up again, not because it was my job, but because you realize that when you’re a comedian, comedy is your survival. It’s how you survive getting through life. It always ended up being something I leaned back into.”

The new look at life informed the tone of it all. “I do talk about my experience and stuff, but besides just the material itself, I think the energy of it is, ‘Wow, we’re all ticking time bombs.'”

That’s not saying the special is an introspective experience. Silverman details stories about her activism and tells stories about her sisters (except The Comeback‘s Laura Silverman, who made it unscathed), including one hilarious drunken moment one of her sisters had where she pooped her pants.

“She gave me full permission. First I said, ‘Can I tell that story? I won’t say your name,’ and she said yes,” Silverman explained. “And then I was doing standup and I said her name and it really worked well. Then I go, ‘Can I say your name?’ and she was like, ‘Ugh. Yes.'”